How special has been the Aam Aadmi Party?

In its seven years of existence, the AamAdami Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal has been through its highs and lows. Presently, it is riding on the high-wave of the recent SC ruling that the L-G must work harmoniously with his ministers.

The idea was to fight for the common man – the ‘aam adami’, to make the government offices free of corruption and to bring about a platform for fair politics at the national level. In its seven years of existence, the Aam Adami Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal has been through its highs and lows. Presently, it is riding on the high-wave of the recent SC ruling that the L-G must work harmoniously with his ministers. Kejriwal emerged from Anna

Hazare’s anti-corruption movement in 2011, and subsequently launched his own political party – AAP. They played fiddle in the streets of Delhi, echoing the need for significant changes and called for more fresh faces in main stream politics to topple the dominant national parties mainly the Congress and BJP. In the past two years, the AAP who promised to fight corruption and end the woes of the ‘aam aadmi’ is struggling in every step.

Besides crying wolf for every directive, policy or order from the Central government, AAP is losing its momentum. The party supremo has been labelled an opportunist by close aides – Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Kumar Vishwas, all having left the party.

Achievements and Failures

The AAP holds its achievements in the Capital State, Delhi in terms of education, health and water. For education, there are 21 new school buildings, functional toilets with separate blocks for girls and boys, and state of the art facilities in 54 schools.

The Delhi government has implemented a robust health infrastructure with 36 multispecialty hospitals including six super-specialty hospitals and 10 hospitals having blood banks and blood storage facilities. They have also greatly reduced the water and sewage development chargers. The party’s spokesperson Dilip Pandey claims AAP to be the world’s most disruptive and the most successful political organization.

Earlier this year in a media interview, Pandey said their success story was that their party had formed a government in one state that is Delhi, was the main opposition party in Punjab and also in three units of Delhi’s municipal corporation. But AAP’s dream of rooting into national politics failed miserably in Goa and Punjab polls. And again, it employed the blame-game to defend its failure. The Aam Aadmi Party had caught itself in a whirlpool of nepotism, corruption, assault and backtracking on promises.

Enthusiasm Lost

The ‘aam aadmi’ having lost faith in the Party’s course is mainly attributed to the party itself. The AAP has been embroiled in in-fighting and allegations of corruption. In 2017, the Delhi Police arrested 13 MLAs on the charges of rape, extortion, cheating, forgery and rioting. Moreover, in February this year, Delhi chief secretary, Anshu Prakashalleged to have been assaulted by AAP MLAs inside Kejriwal’s residence. Then the party took India for a surprise by going on an ‘apology spree’. Kejriwal cut his losses by extricating himself from more than 30 expensive and energy-consuming defamation cases. This angered many of his supporters and damaged his image. Where is the Aam Aadmi Party headed? Or will it fizzle out from politics altogether? It is too early to say.

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